The Tacoma Narrows Fallacy
Teach your teacher: the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge WASN'T resonance. And I defer all arguments to the elocution of Profs. Billah and Scanlon: http://www.ketchum.org/billah/Billah-Scanla...
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You've probably seen footage of the Tacoma narrows bridge collapse in 1940 (if not, it'sall over the internet). And while I've heard that in Seattle they just call it bad bridgebuilding, most teachers and physics textbooks have probably told you that the bridge collapsedbecause of resonance with the wind.But they're wrong! That's because a resonance is a vibration driven by a source oscillatingat a similar frequency - like how a swing at the park goes higher and higher as youpush it, or the electrons in an antenna move in tandem with the electromagnetic waves ofa radio signal, or how a guitar string vibrates or wine glass shatters if you sing at justthe right pitch.And that's not what happened at the Tacoma narrows,...
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You've probably seen footage of the Tacoma narrows bridge collapse in 1940 (if not, it'sall over the internet). And while I've heard that in Seattle they just call it bad bridgebuilding, most teachers and physics textbooks have probably told you that the bridge collapsedbecause of resonance with the wind.But they're wrong! That's because a resonance is a vibration driven by a source oscillatingat a similar frequency - like how a swing at the park goes higher and higher as youpush it, or the electrons in an antenna move in tandem with the electromagnetic waves ofa radio signal, or how a guitar string vibrates or wine glass shatters if you sing at justthe right pitch.And that's not what happened at the Tacoma narrows,...
